


Five Year Reunion to be Held in the Dairy Aisle

by frogy



Category: Saved! (2004)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Gen, M/M, School Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 15:18:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frogy/pseuds/frogy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary doesn't know if American Eagle Christian High School has reunions. If they do, she probably won't be invited.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Year Reunion to be Held in the Dairy Aisle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lls_mutant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lls_mutant/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide lls_mutant! I forgot how much I loved this movie until I rewatched it. It has a really great closed canon, so I wrote some future!fic. I hope you like it.
> 
> Unbeta'd but hopefully I've caught and fixed any egregious errors.

Mary doesn't know if American Eagle Christian High School has reunions. If they do, she probably won't be invited. She suspects that good Christian high schools don't want anything to do with their pregnant unwed teen mothers and their gay baby-daddies. Cassandra hasn't thought about it, but if she did, she too would assume she's not invited. Roland doesn't know either. He assumes not, because he'd be invited, but he wouldn't want to go. 

\---

"Mom," Mary calls from where she's digging through their freezer. "I can't find any more butter. Do you know where it is?"

"If it's not there, we don't have any," her mom shouts back.

Ugh. Mary closes the freezer, and goes to find her mom in the den where her mom's coloring with Valerie. "We don't have enough butter to make a second batch of cookies for Dean's party tomorrow. I'm going to run to the store." 

"Cookies?" Valerie says looking up from her drawing. The drawing is a pony. Mary only knows that from lots of prior experience. "For daddy? Oh! Can I give him a reindeer one? And I'll put red sprinkles on the nose and then it can be Rudolph, like the song." 

Valerie is really getting into the cookie aspect of Christmas. Mary's mom and Valerie made most of their Christmas cookies while Mary was killing herself over finals this year, cookies already packaged up and given to friends around the neighborhood. 

"Yes sweetie, but the cookies need to bake first, and then we'll decorate them. I need to go to the store, I'll be right back. You can grandma can stay here, okay?"

"Okay!" Valerie says. "I'm drawing ponies."

Mary grabs her keys and heads out with a huff. She knows she told her mom she needed to make more cookies and was hoping to get them done tonight. This semester has been really stressful and she wanted to have a nice, stress-free break. The first two years of college weren't too bad, even after the time off from school, but junior year's been rough. She is so ready to be done with school, get a job, and finally move out.

\---

Roland doesn't go with Kate's parents to pick her up from the airport. They have a mini-van with one of the back seats removed, so he could get in their car even if it's not quite legal, but it's a bumpy, uncomfortable ride. So he waits for her at her house with her brothers. He and Kate met sophomore year of college, working on the school newspaper and have been dating ever since. Except when they graduated she moved to New York to be a junior editorial assistant at The New Yorker and he moved home.

Roland's only incredibly bitter about it.

But with the sound of Kate rolling her wheelie suitcase up the front drive, finally home and seeing her after four months apart, it's no time to dwell on it.

"Hey everyone!" she shouts throwing open the door as she gets in. "It's time for eggnog and A Year Without Santa Clause."

Kate makes her rounds, hugging her two brothers hello, before coming to Roland. He takes her hand and squeezes. She squeezes back before leaning down to kiss him. When she stands up she leaves their hands together. "Come on," she tugs, "eggnog."

It's hard to move around one handed, but Roland's had practice, the hand-holding their 'thing', since he can't just lean over and kiss her whenever he wants. So he goes with her to the kitchen, as she fills him in on what's happened since they last spoke (yesterday) and how the trip was.

When she goes to dig around the fridge for ingredients he reluctantly lets go.

"We don't have eggs," Kate says, crouching down to check and make sure they're not just hiding behind the ham or something.

"Mom, dad," she shouts. "There are no eggs."

"Sorry," her mom shouts back. "I must have used the last on the meatloaf."

"Roland and I are going to get more," she says.

"Okay," her mom says. "Keys are on the table." So with her suitcase still sitting inside the front door they head out again.

Kate is less smiley in the car. "So, how are things?"

"Better now that you're here," Roland says. "Otherwise, as sucky as ever."

"You should move to New York," Kate says. Again.

"How? I don't have a job," he says.

"You don't have a job here either. I'm sure you can get one there."

"And where will I live?"

"You can move in with me?"

"And your roommates won't care?"

"None of us are making enough to live there either; if you can pay a quarter of the rent, we'd love to have you. We live near a subway with an elevator. It'll be perfect."

"A subway with an elevator. Which means lots of others don't." Roland rolls his eyes, sighing. He doesn't even know why he's so against it. 

"I don't know why you're suddenly saying you can't do something when I've never heard you say that before." That's true. He hates it when people tell him he can't do something. 

Maybe he's so against it not as a place, but as this thing he's losing Kate to. "Can we just not fight about this now?"

"Sure." Kate turns on the radio, letting it fill the silence.

\---

"So, latkes?" Adam asks.

It's not the first time that Cassandra has brought Adam home for the holidays. In fact, she's brought him home so many times that it goes without saying at this point. Once early on Cassandra's mom asked if Adam didn't have a family of his own to spend the holiday's with, but Adam's parents had a really bad divorce. Things are okay now, but holidays are still a point of contention. So he's been holidaying it up with Cassandra's family almost since they started dating.

But since none of them celebrate Christmas, today doesn't really count as a holiday spent together. "Didn't you have latkes for Hannukah?" Cassandra's dad asks. He's very serious about his holiday food (but not the actual holidays,) and Hannukah fell out at the beginning of December while Cassandra and Adam were still at school. 

"We did," Adam says. "But you guys didn't get to have any." One of the many perfect things about Adam is that he cooks. 

"I don't think we have all the ingredients you need," Cassandra's mom says.

"We can go to the store." Cassandra's the only one who doesn't get into the holiday togetherness and would be happy pretending today weren't different from any other day (she'd be happy about Passover not being different from any other night either). Although she is excited about eating all the eggrolls tomorrow. "Come on, lets go."

"We'll be back," Adam says.

"I'll be back," Cassandra's dad says in a bad Schwarzenegger impersonation.

Cassandra rolls her eyes. "And as lame as ever."

\---

Unfortunately, there's nothing anyone can do to stop from running into former high school classmates at Giant when they're just trying to pick up groceries.

"Hey Mary," Roland says, rolling down the dairy aisle, florescent lights reflecting off his chair.

"Hey Roland," she says. At least it's not, you know, anyone else.

"Merry Christmas," he says. "How are you?"

"Fine." Mary hates making small-talk. "We were just running short on butter," she says, gesturing to her basket. "I'm making Christmas cookies."

"Cool." Roland shrugs at the eggs in his lap. "Can't have eggnog without the eggs either."

"I didn't know people still made that with eggs. What about the salmonella?"

"The booze kills it off," he says.

"Really?"

"I don't know. I just made that up. But it sounds good, right?"

"Yeah, I bought it." Mary buys a lot of crap that people say. She makes a concerted effort over the years to not, but when it comes down to it, her first thought is never 'I bet that person's lying.' "I guess you're -" not doing Christmas at your house' Mary started before getting cut off in the middle by a voice from behind. There's no way Roland and Hilary Faye's family is boozing up their eggnog.

"There you are!"

Mary turns around slowly, as much as she wasn't thrilled to see Roland by the butter, she has dread in her stomach at the thought of running into Hilary Faye. But it's not Hilary Faye.

"Kate." Roland's hand takes hers as she comes to stand next to him, his elbow resting on the armrest of his chair. "This is Mary, we went to high school together."

"Hi Mary." Kate offers her other hand, and Mary shakes it. "Was it as bad as Roland makes it out to be?"

"Worse," Mary says, because there's no way that's not the complete truth. Kate's got wavy, dirty-blond hair and thick black-framed hipster glasses. Roland didn't say anything, but it's obvious they're dating. "How did you guys meet?"

"College," Kate says.

"We were on the school newspaper together," Roland says.

"Cool," Mary nods.

"But I grew up right off of Fourth Street, like sort of behind Good Wok," Kate says. Mary nods; she knows where that is. "So if you guys weren't all Jesus freaks we would have gone to high school together." 

"Don't worry, definitely not a Jesus freak," Mary interjects.

Kate continues. "But I'm just home for the holidays. I'm living in New York now."

"Oh, cool," Mary says. "Are you in New York too?" she looks at Roland questioningly.

"No," Roland says darkly, and Mary senses she just tripped into a conversational minefield. "I'm at home until I can convince someone to hire me. What about you?"

"I'm going to Towson. I took two years off, so I'm a junior. Living at home and commuting, you know." 

"You have got to be shitting me," a voice says from behind Mary. And at least this time she knows it's not Hilary Faye before she even turns around. She doubts even a five years later Hilary Faye would say 'shit.' So it's only a mild shock when Mary turns around to find Cassandra shouting "are we on Candid Camera or some shit?" down the aisle at them.

"I'm pretty sure they cancelled that show," Roland says as Cassandra and her grocery shopping companion join their awkward circle.

"What are you guys doing? You still talk? I thought I wasn't alone in never wanting to see anyone from this crap town ever again?" Cassandra shoots off, rapid fire.

"Butter, cookies," Mary says holding up her basket.

"Eggs, eggnog," Roland parrots.

"Damn, even your holiday food is better," Cassandra says, holding up a sack of potatoes. "We're making latkes." She pauses. "Hi, I'm Cassandra," she introduces herself to Kate.

"Kate," Kate says.

"And this is Adam," Cassandra says, introducing the scruffy guy at her side. He looks like a roadie, or what Mary imagines a roadie must look like. Everything she knows about roadies comes from that one Lifetime original movie where Jennifer Love Hewitt leaves her life and her abusive husband to follow around and eventually fall in love with a rock-star with a heart of gold. But he's got a beanie on, and a couple of days stubble, and two full sleeves of tattoos peaking out from where he's pushes the sleeves of his hoodie up.

"Hey," Adam says, and they do another round of handshakes and names.

"Where's your plus-one?" Cassandra asks her.

"It's just me," Mary says.

"Guys suck," Cassandra says easily enough like the her that Mary remembers, but the words are softer, or maybe it's just the way that she's holding Adam's hand that makes them seem that way. "I only keep Adam around because my parents like him better. He's a nice Jewish boy, you know." Cassandra pulls Adam's arm up, twisting it around until they can see a Jewish star tattoo nestled just under Adam's elbow. Cassandra is smiling in a way Mary knows she never did in high school. "So, how's the sprog?"

"Good," Mary says. "Valerie's in kindergarten now."

"Ooh, the big leagues," Cassandra says.

"Oh god, like you wouldn't believe," Mary says. "Apparently all the girls in class talked about what they were asking for from Santa, so she was super specific about present requests this year."

"Truth time," Roland says, "are you the type of parent who bought her all the things she asked Santa for?"

"Some of them," Mary says. "But honestly, she doesn't need anything from me. My mom and Dean spoil her rotten."

"How is Dean?" Roland asks, "you keep in touch with him?"

"Yeah," Mary says. "He just moved in with his boyfriend. They're having a Christmas party tomorrow night, that's actually what the cookies are for."

"Is he still with what's-his-name?" Cassandra asks. Mary tilts her head and looks at Cassandra. "You know, the prom guy."

"Oh, no." Mary doesn't even remember that guy's name. And Dean has had lots of boyfriends since. But he's been with Darryl, the current boyfriend for the last year-ish.

"Oh," Cassandra says, "yeah, I guess that was a long time ago."

They're all kind of quiet, and Mary remembers her mom guessing that there's an awkward pause every seven seconds to the game show on TV. She was wrong, it's every seven minutes, and Mary thinks they've just hit theirs.

"Roland?" This time the voice exactly who Mary would most like to avoid.

"You couldn't pay me enough to hang around and talk to Hilary Faye," Cassandra says. "See you suckers." And she and Adam make an exit stage left right down the bread aisle.

"I should probably get home too," Mary says. "I want to get the cookies in the oven so we can decorate them before Valerie's bed time." She doesn't want to be rude, but Cassandra had the right idea making a run for it.

"Bye," Roland says. He doesn't have the luxury of running away because if he does, he'll hear all about it from Hilary Faye at home. So he spins around as Mary walks away, and says "Hi Hilary Faye."

"Hi Roland, hi Katie. Who were you guys talking to?" Mary hears Hilary Faye say. Mary probably shouldn't, but she stops, loitering in front of the cereal to see what Roland says.

"We just ran into Mary and Cassandra."

"What were they doing here?" Hilary Faye asks.

"Buying groceries." Roland says. Mary can hear that he's rolling his eyes from the tone of his voice. This conversation is not worth the eavesdropping. She really does need to get home and get the cookies in the oven, or she's going to have one cranky kid on her hands.

\---

"So, those were your friends," Adam says as he and Cassandra get back in the car. He's got a grocery bag of potatoes sitting in the foot-well, and he can't figure out a way for them to comfortably co-exist with his feet. So Adam's not looking at Cassandra as he speaks.

"I don't know if I'd say that." Cassandra can't tell what his comment is supposed to mean. 

"They were nice," Adam says as Cassandra backs the car out of the parking space.

"I guess," she says. "We were the freaks that no one else would be friends with, so we kind of defaulted to one another."

"Oh." They fall into silence.

Cassandra honestly hadn't thought about Mary or Roland in ages. All she wanted while she was in high school was to get out. And at the end of that summer, when things came to an end with Roland, she went as far away as fast as she could get and hasn't looked back. 

If she could somehow not come home for the holidays, she wouldn't even want to be in this town again. But her family is here.

And, seeing Mary and Roland again wasn't actually terrible. It reminded her of the good times they had. Like that time when she did actually teach Mary how to steal a turkey from the grocery store (not that Mary actually let her walk out with it). Or when she and Roland would show up late to sold-out movies specifically so they could kick people out of the handicapped seats (telling them to take their leg-room and fuck off).

"We were friends, I guess," she corrects after way too long of a pause. There were three and then some miserable years at Westville, and DEHS, and finally American Eagle that she forgets that little while at the end was actually fun.

"You don't need to explain to me," Adam. "It's Christmas, and I'd rather be anywhere but home."

"No," Cassandra says. "Mary and Roland are good people. We were friends. It was cool to hear what they're up to. It's crazy to think Mary's kid is in pre-K already. It's like, a second ago she was prego in high school. But I guess it really was a while ago. And that we've all grown up since then. Oh god, I can't believe I said that. Please kill me now."

"I'll take a pass on that one."

"Fine, I guess I can live with death-by-latkes."

"Let's get started then."

Five years later, when Cassandra gets the invitation to the American Eagle 10 year reunion, she doesn't hesitate for a second to check off the 'Will Be Attending' and send her RSVP card back. 

\---

"Hilary Faye?" Roland says as he rolls into the living room, maneuvering around the Christmas tree which blocks his normal path to the kitchen. Roland didn't expect anyone to be up yet. Hilary Faye never outgrew the little-kid tradition of waking up at dawn on Christmas and then waking up the rest of the household to open presents now, right now, come on hurry up, I want presents. But there she is, sitting on the couch, still in the pajamas she sleeps in (which are not the ones she puts on to open presents in so that she looks good in all the Christmas-present opening photos), hands wrapped around a mug, staring into the middle-distance behind the Christmas tree.

"Hey," she says, only a moment too late pulling herself out of whatever she's thinking about. "What's up?"

"You didn't wake us up."

"I didn't think you'd be here."

"It's Christmas. Of course I'd be here."

"I thought you might have been at Kate's."

"Not on Christmas." Roland moves next to the couch, next to Hilary Faye. He looks at the tree. Maybe she's on to something. But no matter how hard he looks, he doesn't see whatever magical answers she was finding there. He sighs. "Kate wants me to move to New York."

"So why haven't you done it yet?"

"What?" Roland does a double-take. Hilary Faye is the one person he can count on to tell him that he can't do something. "You don't think that's a terrible idea?"

"I do," she says. "But the worse of an idea I think something is, the more likely you are to do it."

"Oh." He never thought about it that way.

"I'm surprised you haven't moved yet. It sucks here."

"Hilary Faye," he says stunned, "I think that's the meanest thing I've ever heard you say."

"Thanks. Can we go wake up mom and dad for presents now?"

"Sure."

It takes two more months before Roland makes the move to New York. He lasts a year in New York. By the time he gets the invite to their ten year reunion, he's enjoying like in sunny Phoenix where he can push his specially rigged Cadillac up to 100 on the straight, empty highways through nothing but sand and saguaro.

\---

 

The next night Mary has retreated to the small galley kitchen in Dean and Darryl's kitchen, hiding amongst the drinks. The cookies were a hit, and Valerie can't get enough of hanging out with Dean who in turn hangs on her every word. But Mary doesn't have anyone to talk to. These are Dean and Darryl's friends and while Dean's cookie parties used to mean a bunch of guys gossiping about who they hooked up with at the club last night, now it seems like all of their friends have paired off into happy couples. Everyone except her, at any rate.

So she's note quite hiding from making small talk with strangers about how she's going to grow old and die alone, but if avoidance is a side-effect of taking a really long time refilling her drink, well, she's not going to complain about it. The one flaw with this hiding but not hiding plan is that she's really easy to find.

Case in point, Darryl is in the doorway, saying "hey, there you are."

"Yup," Mary says.

"You disappeared."

"Just re-filling my drink," she says, holding up her faux-fancy plastic wine glass.

"I just wanted to say thanks for coming again, Dean loves having you and Darryl here."

"Of course," Mary says. "We love being here. God," she says, and it's amazing how long it took until that could roll off her tongue naturally, "Valerie is crazy about him."

"Yea, it's adorable," Darryl says. Mary doesn't have an answer. If Darryl was worried about her hiding away from the party, he's found her and she's willing to be dragged back. But Darryl's standing in the doorway, shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the other. So Mary doesn't say anything, just waits for Darryl to say whatever he's caught her in there to say. The silence has long since gotten awkward, but Mary can wait. "So, Dean still doesn't talk to his parents."

Mary knows that, but doesn't see how it's relevant, since Dean has been not speaking to his parents for the whole time Darryl has known him. Dean hasn't spoken to his parents in five years, and neither has Mary, not since they were dating.

"You and Valerie are the closest thing he has to family," name continues, not quite meeting Mary's eyes, "so, I thought I'd ask you. I- um-."

"Out with it." This is painful.

"I'm going to ask him to marry me." The sentence is a rushed, strung-together series of words.

"Oh." Mary was not expecting that. Now it's Darryl's turn to wait while Mary figures out what to say, and with every passing moment of wait he looks more and more peaked peaked for having said it. "That's good, I guess," Mary says finally, not sure what the right response is. Why is he telling her? "I thought it would be another 30 years before I had to deal with something like this."

"What?"

"Well, Valerie's four, so she can get married when she's thirty-four," Mary reasons.

"But what about me and Dean?"

"What about you?"

"You're okay with it?"

"Yes?" Mary says. It's not her answer that's the question, but why he cares what she thinks to begin with.

"And you think he'll say yes?"

"Say yes to what?" And speak of the devil, Dean sticks his head in the doorway to the kitchen.

"Mom, mom, mom," Valerie says winding her way between Dean and Darryl to tug at Mary's leg. "Did you know that Ponies used to be on TV when Daddy was little but they didn't have a Twilight Sparkle or a Fluttershy or any of them them they were all different?"

"Is that so?" Mary asks hoisting Valerie up in her arms. You can always count on kids to miss what's going on, which works out great in this case, the perfect distraction. Dean is giving her a look, like he knows what she's doing, but she's not going to leak this surprise. "Let's go back out to the party and you can tell me all about it," Mary continues, ignoring Dean. Instead, she turns to Darryl and says "definitely yes."

Dean and Darryl are the first friend wedding Mary goes to, but it's a steady increasing stream from there on out of friends getting married, as classmates around her start getting engaged. She sees on facebook when Cassandra and Adam get married, and then once she's done with school and out in the working world it's co-workers tying the knot. Shortly after she starts a new job, Mary is out to happy hour with the office, and she winds up talking to this guy. He's a little older, presumably some higher up that she hasn't met before. It's not until they're leaving and he asks for her number that she realizes they've been flirting. He explains that he's John's friend, and Mary vaguely recalls a guy named John who works at the far end of the row of cubicles. So she gives him her number.

When the invitation for the ten year reunion arrives in the mail, Mary checks off that she's bringing her fiance.

\---

Their ten year reunion is at a nondescript catering hall. Mary, Roland, and Cassandra sit at the same table, getting progressively drunker taking turns getting the rounds of drinks. Whichever second highest overachiever planned it (because Hilary Faye's in Europe doing missionary work) didn't spring for an open bar so they're paying for them. But it's worth it to enjoy reminiscing about the not-that-good, not-that-old, days.


End file.
